Love it or hate it, Valve's Steam service is here to stay and offers gamers a very simple way to get games created by the company and an expanding list of third parties. One feature of Steam that hasn't really been used until now is its ability to compile statistics about how players are playing games over the service.

At the end of last week, Valve released compiled statistics relating to its latest release Half-Life 2: Episode One, and in doing so got somewhat of a shock. Remembering that this release is only meant to take about four hours to complete, a mere 24.37% of people who bought it online have completed it. Other information garnered included the average session time of 37 minutes, average total playtime of 2 hours 54 minutes, and average completion time of 5 hours.

Valve has been very surprised by the percentage of people completing the game and is even suggesting there may be a bug in the statistics tracking. The data has been collected since June 10 and currently consists of averages taken from 753,713 sessions played.

If this was a full game with hours to complete in the double digits, then the figures of 25% completion rate would not be that surprising. Many gamers do not take the time to complete games, especially those that go on for many hours. Since this is only a short episode, however, I expected the percentage to be much higher. Is this just a trend, a reflection of the content, or a worrying precursor to Episode Two not selling so well, because people haven't gone through the story of the first episode?

Truth Hurts(9:05am EST Mon Jun 26 2006)Maybe the much ballyhooed expansion isn't all its cracked up to be. I haven't played it myself, seems a bit expensive for a short expansion. - by Buckup Valve

My thoughts are:(11:47am EST Mon Jun 26 2006)1. I'm upset that the expansion was SO short and didn't really answer any questions.2. I'm upset that when you download it off of steam its $20, but yet the BOXED version at Sams Club was $16.3. I hate Steam because everytime I play HL it wants to force me to do some stupid updates…the last of which broke the DM part of the game.4. I hate Steam b/c you should be able to buy one copy of HL and be able to play it on the local LAN. That would fit better with console gaming models…do you buy 3 extra copies of Halo so that you and your buddies can go head-2-head on the Xbox? - by theGrasshopper

Oh..one more thing(11:48am EST Mon Jun 26 2006)it's also lame that there wasn't even one new type of enemy to fight..same generic dudes and same generic noises when they die. :( - by theGrasshopper

re: theGrasshopper(12:45pm EST Mon Jun 26 2006)Maybe if you did your homework first before buying this game, you wouldn't have been so disappointed! - by JJ

It's the summer(6:35pm EST Mon Jun 26 2006)Even gamers can't resist the good weather.- by And so it should be

Couldn't do it.(7:52pm EST Mon Jun 26 2006)I wanted to play Episode One, even though I have HL2, I hate steam too much to go through that again. - by Noworkia

Hmmm(10:31pm EST Mon Jun 26 2006)I saw this being played a few weeks ago, i have to get an account and get it soon…

I love HL2 simply because it has a great story line :)

- by Headley

Steam is fine by me.(10:40pm EST Mon Jun 26 2006)I like Steam. It's never given me a problem. I like the fact that I can start it running before I go to work, and know that I have all the latest updates when I get home. …and it's way better than having to download patches from goofball web sites with slow servers that make you jump through hoops. I wish more games were available through steam.

Episode 1 was just barely worth the $20. I thought it mostly more of the same when comparred with Half Life 2, but I enjoyed the updated graphics and slightly more fun Alex. I imagine that you may need a pretty decent video card to notice the updated graphics, though. I suppose also it's a matter of expectations – I didn't expect it to be a whole lot different than Half Life 2, I just expected it to be a few new levels with slightly updated graphics, and that's what I got. - by Carl

Something the Gaming systems don't have is: Quad Core CPU with a Quad GPU setup. Not even the to be Playstation 3.

At the same time, PC gaming will die when everyone in the #%T$%en world buys a Mac and 4 Mill of WoW players quit :P

HL2 engine with the loading does P!ss me off at times and the Unreal 3 engine will alow streamless gaming w/o loads. The Cry2 Engine is even better with interactive environment and no loading…. - by Progamefreak

Episode 1(10:26am EST Tue Jun 27 2006)I liked it, sort of short but overall I think it was worth it. It gives me hope for Episode 2 maybe they will make it a little longer or maybe more interesting ? (some parts of 1 where boreing but I have to say less so then HL2) - by MarketWatcher

Stop whining…(5:54pm EST Fri Jul 07 2006)Quit your whining on steam, don't you realize how such a program could revolutionize the gaming industry? I've never had any trouble with it and find it quite convenient not to have to browse through tons of porn financed download sites to patch a game. And you might want to consider upgrading to a better connection, it's not steams fault that your D/L is slow. - by ChrisDeKitchen

Oh btw…(6:02pm EST Fri Jul 07 2006)Steam is an excellent opportunity for game developers to release their stuff and try out new ideas without having to go through a publisher. Which in turn means more money directly to the developers = better games. And they don't have to pay any notice to a publishers demands of “high” sales. Which means they can experiment more. Who knows, maybe we could start seeing more FUN games at the market in the future. Too bad the valve guys are a bit slow when it comes to pricing of products on steam. - by ChrisDeKitchen